


were you dazzled by the same constellation?

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: A split timeline sort of thing about possibilities, F/F, Gay Elf Girls, Romance, There are like no canon characters mentioned, This is incredibly OC centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8406340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: There are a lot of paths twisting and branching and meeting and colliding. There are few constants. Sometimes, they are each other's constant.





	

Time isn’t linear, it is messy and there are many different paths branching off from each other. Sometimes they collide. Sometimes they don’t even come close. There are many ways it can go differently, though. There always are. There are few constants.    
  
Jessa is always Jessa. She is always the Keeper’s first, she is always a mage, there are some things that all universes abide by. She always has the same bright, wide eyes, and the same freckles splattered across her nose. Her hair is always short and messy. This is who she is. There are no others. Ellana is always a hunter. Sometimes she favors daggers more than she favors a bow but she never uses a sword and she never picks up a shield. She is always agile and she is always fast. She always has the same tired eyes with dark half-moon circles underneath, she always has long dark hair that she lets herself be selfish enough to keep, and she always has the scars from a childhood spent playing with daggers and arrows. This is her constant. This is who she is. 

 

Their paths branch often. Sometimes, Ellana loves Jessa. Sometimes it is mutual, sometimes it is unrequited. Most often, it is mutual. Sometimes, Ellana courts Jessa with bouquets of flowers picked from the woods, and sometimes she carves delicate halla trinkets for the other girl. Other times, it is Jessa courting Ellana, with spells and hope and stories. 

 

Sometimes, Ellana is sent to the Conclave. In over half of these universes, she loves Jessa. “Keeper, it would make more sense for a hunter to go. Jessa is our only other mage. We have many other hunters,” Ellana would say. Deshanna would nod and smile, and if it is a universe where Ellana loves her, there would be a knowing glint in the old Keeper’s eyes. 

 

Sometimes, Jessa is sent to the Conclave. In most of these universes, the two of them are in love, and she cannot stand by while Ellana marches off to war. “I should bear this burden,  _ vhenan _ ,” she says, as she presses soft and gentle kisses to Ellana’s cheeks, her neck, her collarbones, right over her heart. 

 

In a few rare universes, they go together. They are always in love in these universes, and they are there to face the world together, with clasped hands and ironbark rings. These universes are rare. In some of them, they die in the explosion. In others, one of them dies and the other survives. In one, they manage to survive together, and the weight of the world is easier to bear when it is shared. 

 

Sometimes, no matter who was sent to the Conclave, Wycome kills the other. In these universes, Ellana turns into a force to be reckoned with, revenge incarnate, and once Corypheus is defeated and the Breach closed she hunts down the soldiers who slew her kin and her clan with a vengeance. Jessa turns into a sad, frightened thing. The weight of it all is even harder to bear knowing that she is the last of Clan Lavellan. 

 

Sometimes, though, the other survives Wycome. Ellana will come home with a bare face and a heavy heart, and only one arm, and in the universes where Jessa loves her, the Keeper’s apprentice will kiss the Inquisitor until she is laughing and smiling and the sorrow isn’t quite so heavy. In some of those universes, Ellana is allowed to reapply her vallaslin. She always stays with Jessa in these universes, even when Fen’Harel threatens to tear her world down and set it ablaze. When Ellana survives Wycome, Jessa will return with a head full of the whispers of the dead, with an arm that is missing, and with an anger that she wears like an armor and wields like a weapon. In these universes, Ellana will remind Jessa that there is no shame in being gentle and there is nothing wrong with staying soft and Ellana becomes her shield against all that would make her hard and cold and angry. 

  
There are few constants in the world. But they are each their own constant, and more often than not they are always each other’s constant, too, and in the end, that is enough. 


End file.
